


It Comes Around

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Buried Alive, Gen, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped Castiel (Supernatural), Suicide, Tied-Up Castiel (Supernatural), Winchesters to the Rescue, Worried Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-20 21:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21288521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Not every hunt has a happy ending, and sometimes the people Dean and Sam leave in the rear view mirror afterwards don’t stay there.Cas finds this out to his cost.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 102
Collections: Supernatural Anon Kink Meme





	It Comes Around

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILER ALERT because I know we all worry about Cas
> 
> He gets rescued.

It had to have been a long time since the facility had any power to it, Stevie reckoned. From what the English guy had said, right after the Winchesters and their hunter militia had come for them, the few survivors had fled back to the UK and left everything at their asses.

Which was not okay, given some of that shit was probably dangerous, but it also meant he would likely find here what he was looking for.

He hoped so, anyway. It wasn’t like he could bring the guy back to life and interrogate him again if not.

But first he had to get in, and it took almost fifteen minutes of straining against the crowbar until finally the door catch broke and he was able to push it open.

Stevie turned on his torch, and made his way carefully inside.

The place was a busted up nightmare; shadows everywhere, dust and cobwebs and the stink of decay that told him maybe they’d kept more than just records and artefacts down here, and that it or they had been abandoned at the same time as everything else.

Still, it saved him wasting time and bullets if so, and he picked his way carefully down the hall to the room the English dude had told him to look for.

Found the relevant shelf. Found the locked box.

Double checked the reference and description and then carefully lifted it down.

It took seconds to pick the lock, and then he lifted the lid and shone his flashlight inside.

And grinned.

Looked like he wouldn’t need to worry about a seance after all.

++

The moment Cas woke up, he knew he was in trouble.

It wasn’t just the fact that, as an angel, he shouldn’t _have_ to wake up. It was the immediate awareness of his surroundings, an angelic gift, that made him instantly aware he was in, as Dean would say, deep shit.

For one thing, he was bound. Ropes were knotted around his wrists and forearms, around his ankles, so tightly that even the slightest movement made them catch and burn.

And he couldn’t break them; his instinct was to immediately try, but they held, another sign that something was terribly wrong.

He was also in the dark, which shouldn’t have been possible because angels’ vision wasn’t dependent on light, but he couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face, and this was not the darkness of night.

Cas reached out and barely had to explore more than a few inches in either direction, or above him to know that he was in some kind of container.

The walls were stone, and cold to the touch, and frighteningly solid; he slammed his fist against the ‘roof’ of his prison, and it didn’t budge an inch, which meant pushing his way out was unlikely if not impossible.

He lay there, trying to remain calm, and let his breathing settle.

Breathing.

He was breathing. And not the automatic respiratory response he allowed to continue because there was no need to stop it, and because other humans tended to notice odd things like when someone was walking around but without taking in air.

He was breathing because he had to, and that only meant one thing.

He was human, or at least…. Yes, there. His Grace was still inside him, but as imprisoned as the rest of his body, a wall between it and him and that meant for all intents and purposes, yes, he was human for now.

And in trouble.

The voice came suddenly, startling him, and he twisted around trying to see where it came from.

“Hello, Castiel.” 

He fumbled in the dark, and his fingers brushed a small plastic box, and he picked it up, felt along its ridged surface.

The voice came from within it, a man’s. .

“The sedative I gave you will have worn off by now, so you’ll be awake, and you’ll know you’re trapped, and powerless, and you’re probably trying to figure out why, and what you can do about it.

“I’ll answer the second question before the first. Nothing. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

It was a recording of some kind, Cas reasoned. There weren’t any wires leading from the device, and the stone prison (coffin, his head helpfully suggested) should have prevented any signal getting in or out.

He tested that by awkwardly twisting his bound hands enough to get into his pocket and grab his phone; if his captor had left him with it, then it would be no help, and sure enough the screen showed he had no signal.

“So now I guess I should answer the first question. The why. That’s a long story, and I’ll tell it to you. You have time, though not too much, but it’s not like there’s anything else you can do in there.

“Short version, though…. This really isn’t about you, and you should definitely choose better friends.”

++

Dean hung up, and tossed his phone down on the motel room table.

“I don’t like it.”

Sam looked up from his laptop screen. “Dean, we’ll find him.”

Dean huffed, and sat down across from his brother. “No answer to the phone. Nothing on its location. His car picked up on a dirt road, abandoned, and towed back to the impound yard. Where the hell is he?”

Sam sighed. He wished he had an answer, but it definitely looked like Cas had disappeared on them, and it wasn’t the first time he’d done that, but it also wasn’t the first time he’d had help, and Sam had that kind of feeling.

That someone had taken their angel, and that meant Cas was likely in big trouble.

But they always found each other, always turned up to bring each other home, and this time would be no different.

He shut over the laptop, still nothing pinging to show where Cas’s phone was located, which might mean it was out of range, or just somewhere it couldn’t get a signal, but also meant there was no point looking for it like that.

And the local sheriff hadn’t been too much help either, even when they’d shown him their FBI IDs and passed Cas off as a missing colleague.

He had one deputy and a jail full of drunken townsfolk after a wedding party turned into a full on punch up when the in-laws decided the bride and groom actually weren’t good enough for each other and the fight caused nearly a couple of hundred grand in damages.

And maybe he didn’t buy their story, because he looked at them kind of odd, just for a second, and then said the FBI had resources enough of its own to come look for a missing agent and he had his own problems to take care of.

So it probably wouldn’t do to hang around here too long, but there was also no way they were leaving without Cas, or a definite lead if it turned out he was no longer in the area.

Sam just had a feeling he was, though, and close. But either way, they’d find him.

“Maybe we should try a tracking spell,” he suggested. “We’ve got everything we need in the trunk, including one of his feathers.”

Dean nodded, and got up.

And then his phone rang.

He snatched it up without checking. “Cas?”

Sam saw the way his brother lost two shades of colour and then Dean put the phone on loudspeaker.

“-bet you wish it was _Cas_,” a man said. Is Sam there with you too?”

His tone was odd, his voice clearly disguised by electronic means.

Sam shot a questioning look at Dean, and got a shrug in return. “Yeah, I’m here. Who are you? Do you have Cas?”

The man chuckled. “I don’t _have_ him in the sense he isn’t with me right now. But I know where he is. And let me tell you, it’s someplace he doesn’t wanna be. I know I wouldn’t.”

Dean’s hand squeezed tight enough around the phone to risk snapping it. “You better tell us what you did with him.”

The man sighed. “Oh, Dean. I’m going to, don’t you worry. It won’t make a difference, because you won’t find him in time, but I’ll tell you anyway. Because I want you to know exactly what he’s going through, and why, so you know that it’s your fault.”

Their fault? Somebody had taken Cas because of them?

“Who are you,” he asked, again. “What is this all about?”

There was a moment of silence, like the guy was debating whether to tell them or not.

“Stevie,” he said, finally. “My name is Stevie Bailey.”

++ 

Cas listened. He didn’t have much choice, but there was always the chance that there might be something in the recording to provide him with a clue, something to help him figure out where he was, and if there was a way out.

“I guess they do that,” Stevie’s voice was saying. He had introduced himself, early on, as if who he was made a difference to Cas’s predicament or outlook.

The angel wished it had, but he didn’t know anyone by the name Stevie Bailey. He had never heard Dean or Sam mention such a person either, but clearly this man, who had kidnapped him, and rendered him helpless and trapped, knew them and, worse…

Hated them.

As he listened, he felt his way (as best he could, with his wrists and arms bound) along the walls of his prison, searching inch by inch whatever stone he could reach.

But the surfaces were mostly smooth; there was the odd chip or indentation but they were just natural or man made defects, Cas was sure, not part of any sigil to lock away his Grace.

His arms were aching by then, and he dropped them down with a groan. The ropes made them ache, but his angel blade was gone, too, so he couldn’t even try to free himself.

“I know,” Stevie continued, “that this isn’t fair to you. I never met you before today. You never knew my big brother. But those Winchesters, they did. And Mark, he…. He wasn’t a slouch, you know? But he’d only been hunting two years, and that meant they were responsible for him, and he put his trust in them.

“I guess you’ve done that, too, huh. Probably so have a lot of other people. Like I said, they’re good at making you think you can. But I bet every one of those people paid for it. Just like you’re paying now.”

His body was starting to throb and stiffen from being in one position so long; Cas shifted awkwardly, turning onto his side, inadvertently facing the speaker.

He wished it was a two way communications device; at least then he could reason with this person, try to find out exactly why all this had occurred instead of it being narrated to him in a tortuously slow manner.

As he tried to get as comfortable and pain free as possible, his knee brushed something that was solid, but not stone.

Cas bent forward as far as he could, his forehead pressed into the stone wall, and strained to reach down for whatever it was.

He had to nudge it up with his knee, but then he was able to grab it and pull it closer.

In the darkness, he couldn’t see any of the details, but he could still feel, and he traced his fingers across its surface.

It was about six inches by six inches, wholly metal, and the surface was inscribed with a detailed sigil.

Cas followed the markings, letting Stevie’s voice drone on, and then set the object down.

That explained why he was helpless. Within a certain range of those markings, any angel would find their Grace…_smothered_. Unless Cas could get away from it...impossible since he was sealed in with it...or find a way to disrupt the markings, he wouldn’t get access to his Grace again.

“You know, by now I’ll have told them what’s happening to you. Not where you are, of course. That’s the point to this. And maybe by now you’ll have figured out why you’re trapped. Maybe not, so I’m not going to say anything except there’s nothing you can do about it.

“And I know you’re going to suffer, Castiel. And I’m sorry about that. But the only way to make things right, to pay them back, was to put them through it. So it had to be like this, and I hate that you were the only way I could do it.”

Do what, Cas wanted to know. Bind him, leave him weak and helpless and locked up in a stone prison? To torture the Winchesters with his predicament?

They’d find him. They always did, and all Cas had to do was wait. 

“So while they’re trying to find you, time will be running out and maybe they’ll keep searching even once they know it’s too late. Or maybe they’ll just accept it’s a lost cause at that point, and give up on you.”

Never. They would never, Cas knew, and he didn’t expect it to take them days to find him. Dean and Sam had always found him, always came for him, and he’d never had to wait long for a rescue.

“Leave somebody else to find your body later, stumble over it by accident, wonder who the hell interred some poor bastard alive and left him to suffocate…”

Cas froze. That was…. He should have considered it. But even though he was in pain, a sure signal he had to consider himself fully human, he had let the pain and the urge to escape distract him.

Not once, in his exploration of the box, had his fingers felt the movement of air though any gap or seal. They hadn’t found either, and that mean Cas was essentially in an airtight stone box.

And he didn’t know how long he had been.

At the present, he was breathing normally. 

But for how long?

++

Dean smashed his phone off the wall, shattering the screen and cracking the case, but it didn’t matter.

Stevie had told them what he wanted them to know, and then hung up, and Dean was struggling to reconcile the scrawny kid in the torn dungarees, sobbing his heart out for his lost brother, with the guy who’d kidnapped Cas and buried him alive.

Their fucking luck. Cas shows up here to take on a hunt, and gets kidnapped by some grieving psycho.

Sam seemed frozen to the spot, and Dean wanted to shake him. They didn’t have time to be in shock.

Cas needed them.

He was probably scared and trying to get free (Dean hoped not, hoped Cas stayed smart and just stayed still, making as much of the oxygen he was trapped with as he could, and waited for them to come get him), and being tormented by that fucker telling him exactly why this had happened to him.

Once they found Cas, Dean was going to make finding Stevie Bailey the next priority, followed by putting a bullet through his head.

Sam still hadn’t moved.

“Sam, dammit, come on!” He snapped his fingers irritably in front of Sam’s face.

And Sam pushed him down into a chair in response.

“Just stop,” he said. “Okay? Just stop and calm and _think_. I wanna find Cas, too. I wanna get him out of there, but we need to work out what we _know_ first because we’re not going to find him just by looking.”

Dean wanted to jump back to his feet, but Sam was pleading with him, eyes wide, and it helped him get a hold of himself.

Sam was right. Even presuming Cas was still in the area, what were they going to do? Drive around looking for freshly turned earth? Start breaking into people’s basements and outbuildings? Go running through the local cemetery screaming Cas’s name?

They had to do better, and fast.

_What do we know_?

“He disguised his voice,” Dean said. “So he thinks we’d recognise it.”

“But still told us his name. Which means we’ve met him, recently, probably under an alias, and he doesn’t want us to know it.”

“Because where we met him is probably around where he buried Cas.”

“And this took planning. To find something to hold Cas, to create a hunt to lure him here, that had to be him too.”

Maybe, Dean thought. There was every chance the three of them would have come, but maybe that wouldn’t have mattered. Even when they worked a job together, they inevitably split up at some point, and Stevie was so determined, Dean was sure he’d have found a way to get Cas away from them.

So, yes, planned, thoroughly and well.

But still there was something screaming at him to get his attention, and he tried to zero in, to grab hold of it.

“The case,” he said. “Cas said it was, what? A couple of disappeared kids, right?”

Sam picked up his phone, checking the text Cas had sent him.

“Yeah, there were missing persons pages on social media, a reward, you name it.”

And yet…

“He didn’t mention any of it.”

“Dean?”

“The sheriff. All he mentioned was some dicks-in-laws getting hammered and breaking up the furniture. You think there’s any way some missing kids didn’t come ahead of that?”

Sam shrugged. “If it was a fake hunt, he might not even have known this stuff was online.”

Dean shook his head. “These days? Somebody’s late back two hours in Tucson and people in London are tweeting about bringing them home. C’mon, Sam; this shit takes hold, fast. Would Jody _not_ have known there was some kind of urban myth online about kids disappearing in her town?”

And when they’d turned up, and introduced themselves… Yeah, him taking the appearance of two FBI agents like he did, it hit Dean differently now.

Sheriff Simon Renfeld.

He knew who they were.

It was a reach, and even Sam said so, but right then it was all they had.

Dean looked up the guy’s address, and dug, knowing every second was a second less air that Cas had, but just as wary of heading off on a false lead that might waste even more time.

And Simon Renfeld hadn’t always gone by that name, not according to his adoption records.

“You start that tracking spell,” Dean told Sam. “Even if it just narrows down where Cas is. I’m gonna go have a professional chat with Sheriff Renfeld.”

“Dean,” Sam warned. “He’s already managed to get the drop on Cas.”

Dean nodded. He had, so he’d be extra careful.

But he was still going to beat the shit out of the guy.

++

Logically, Cas knew he should just lie as still as possible, to give Dean and Sam more time to find him.

But just lying there doing nothing when he could be trying to find a way to free himself wasn’t something he could do.

It was also in his mind that coming for him meant potentially encountering the person who’d done this to him, and Cas didn’t want his family anywhere near Stevie Bailey.

The recording was over, anyway. Stevie had apologised again, and hoped Cas didn’t suffer too much, but he had a right to seek revenge for his brother’s murder.

That was how he saw it, and he didn’t blame the demon who’d buried Mark alive.

He blamed Sam and Dean for not taking better care of his brother, for not keeping him safe, for not finding him in time.

Just like they wouldn’t find Cas in time, and again, he was sorry.

Now Cas lay in the silence, shockingly aware of his breathing and his heartbeat, neither good signs he was sure, and decided that he wasn’t going to give Stevie Bailey any reason to be sorry.

He was going to get out of here, if not by his own power, then when his family came for him.

With that in mind, he reached for the small speaker that had Stevie had left in the stone box with him, and smashed it against the wall. 

The sharpest piece slit his fingers when he felt for it and picked it up, but he ignored the pain.

He grabbed for the metal box that bore the Grace inhibiting sigils. They were etched deep into its surface, and there was every chance the plastic wouldn’t be able to disrupt them enough for his Grace to be free, but he had no other option.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, as blood dribbled from his fingers, Cas dragged the plastic against the centre of the sigil and pushed it in deep.

++

Dean figured Stevie must have known they’d be on to him; he wasn’t trying to get away with it, just to delay them enough for Cas to suffer and die, because he didn’t go for the gun lying next to him when Dean burst into his living room.

Dean kept him covered as he came closer, watching him for any sign he’d change his mind and try a quick draw.

But Stevie - Simon, now - just sat there, and when Dean stared at him he could slowly see hints of the kid they’d left broken hearted and alone when they moved on.

Their sin. Which Cas was paying for, but he found himself defending them, telling himself there was nothing else they could have done.

But how was it fair that whether they’d done enough or not, Cas was paying for something that had happened before he was ever in their lives?

“He probably doesn’t have long now,” Stevie said.

“So tell me where he is.”

Stevie shook his head. “You think I did all this just to yellow out at the last minute?”

“No,” Dean said. “Just to show him mercy. Compassion. He never did anything to you.”

“I know that. But I’ve been watching you three for a long time; being a law enforcement officer gets you access to information, and still knowing things from your brother’s old life, it all helped me find where you were at. Not a lot of hunters these days to get your tracks mixed up with. I’ve seen he’s your family. That you care about him.

“And it couldn’t be Sam, could it? Or you. I want you both to live with the guilt of knowing what you brought on him. That he died slow and in pain, probably expecting you’d come get him, because you’re _the Winchesters_ and you got him to trust you, right?”

“We looked for your brother,” Dean said. “We did everything we could.”

There were tears building in Stevie’s eyes, and Dean wanted to look away, but that gun was close and he didn’t have time to be gentle or merciful.

“He still died though,” Stevie said.

He was going to beat Cas’s location out of this guy if he had to.

“And so will Cas.” 

There was something in his hand, and he threw it and Dean moved on instinct, reaching out to catch it as it came glinting through the air. 

Which meant he was distracted when Stevie reached for his gun, distracted and too slow, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t Dean that Stevie ended up shooting.

Dean stood there, staring in horror at what was left of the guy’s head, and then down at the key in his hand: big, old, the kind that’d be used for heavy locks, in big ornate doors, or even doors made of…

...stone.

Dean didn’t look back as he ran for the door, grabbing his back up phone and dialling Sam.

“Tell me you got a location.”

“I’m working on it. Did Stevie...?”

Dean started up the car, set the phone in its cradle on the dash. “Not gonna tell us anything.”

Sam seemed to read what he meant. “Dean, there’s no way to know how much time we have.”

Dean wished there was a direct way for Cas to answer their prayers, but with his Grace shut down, who knew if he was even receiving them just then.

He had to try anyway.

_We’re coming for you, Cas. Just be alive when we get there or I’ll pluck your wings_.

“We’ll have enough,” he said, and glanced at the key. A clue, if not much of one, but maybe what would save Cas when they finally found where was he.

++

The plastic, slick with his blood, slipped from his grip; it ended up deep in his palm, and Cas dropped the box, crying out at the sudden pain.

He lay there, panting, furious at himself for his clumsiness. Not that it mattered, anyway; the plastic hadn’t scratched deep enough to marr the sigils, so he was still as he was before.

Weak, and helpless, and….

Running out of air.

He noticed it more keenly, now that he wasn’t distracted by the box. The air had a thin quality to it, and each breath was unsatisfying, leaving his lungs feeling like he was barely getting any air at all.

Which meant he probably didn’t have too much longer.

He considered, again, calling out for help; the only reason he hadn’t done so earlier was that it was likely a pointless course of action.

He was either buried (though he had started to doubt that, given the nature of his container) or interred somewhere out of the way; it didn’t seem likely for Stevie to have left him somewhere he’d easily be found, or heard, if he did cry out to anyone who might be nearby.

And it...smacked of desperation, and Cas had been unwilling to surrender to that.

But he was desperate. Desperate, in trouble, and alone, and the help he was counting on hadn’t come.

Yet.

He wasn’t going to give up on his humans. They would find him.

Cas just had to hope it was in time.

++

By the time Dean got back to the motel, Sam had their gear ready, and from the look on his face as Dean pulled up, he’d also figured out where Cas was.

He dumped their bags in the back and then jumped in next to Dean.

“North,” he said. “There’s an old family cemetery just outside town, tiny, nobody left to tend it or anything. It’s half swallowed up by the woods now, and the perfect place to…”

“To bury somebody alive.” Dean put his foot down, and then took out the key, one handed, that Stevie had thrown to him, and told Sam all that had happened.

“So Cas is probably in the family mausoleum instead of actually buried,” Sam said. “It’s a break.”

Not much of one. Sure, they wouldn’t have to find the grave and then waste precious minutes digging Cas up, but it still left him in an airtight container and probably close to suffocating.

If he hadn’t….

No. Dean shook his head, banishing even the possibility of that. They knew where he was now, they had the way to get him out, and he sent another urgent prayer to the trapped angel, assuring him that rescue was on the way.

He followed Sam’s directions, glad that the further towards the cemetery they got, the quieter the roads were so he could really open Baby up and for once Sam didn’t object to the speed he was travelling at.

Up ahead, finally, he saw the woods, and had to slow down to take the winding turn that saw them leave the road and hit a rough track.

Sam hadn’t been kidding about nobody being out this way a lot; it felt like driving over train tracks the whole way, but Dean didn’t care. He could fix his car, repair or replace any damaged parts.

He couldn’t replace Cas.

Up ahead were a pair of lopsided metal gates, held together by a rusted but thick looking chain and padlock.

Dean slammed on the brakes. With enough speed they could have driven through, but there was no way to build up enough pace to just crash the gates out of the way.

Instead, he got out and grabbed their bolt cutters. It took one single cut to shear through the chain, and Dean tossed it aside and then shoved open the gates.

Sam had slid over into the driver’s seat, and he was off again the minute Dean was back in the car.

The remaining road into the mausoleum was only a hundred yards or so, and then they saw it: a crumbling single storey structure, a plaque of some kind screwed into the wall by the door, the surface covered with a patina of dirt and age.

Sam pulled up, and they ran at the door.

It was wood, and it was warped and weather damaged but even if it was stone, they’d have found a way through.

It gave with them both throwing themselves at it, sending them both to a heap on the ground, the noise like the echo of thunder in the chamber.

Both men scrambled to their feet, and looked around them.

The walls had been sectioned off into individual tombs, each marked by a smaller placque, but none of them had keyholes, so unless Stevie had been fucking with him, Dean knew Cas wasn’t in any of those.

And then he saw it.

Right at the back, in a semi circular alcove, was a large stone vault, and even from there Dean could see it had a keyhole.

“Sam, Sam, he’s in there!”

They raced towards it, yelling Cas’s name, and who knew if any sound even reached him in there, but neither of them could help it.

Dean slammed into the stone, tearing at it, his panic making him forget it would need to be unlocked for them to get in.

Sam was tearing at the key, the size of the damn thing making it catch on the lining of his pocket, but then it was out, and his hands were shaking as he shoved it into the lock.

Dean felt like his heart had stopped; maybe Cas wasn’t in here. Maybe the spell was wrong or maybe it was right but Stevie had given them a fake key and this was just the final torment, for them, for Cas, rescue so close and yet failing in that last moment.

He watched as Sam started to turn the key.

++

Cas coughed as he tried to breathe. It was almost time, and he knew it; his lungs ached and his throat felt like it was closing up on him.

His head was throbbing, and it was likely he’d pass out soon, but there was a part of him that still wasn’t ready to give up.

And then he heard it. A terrific crash as if something had fallen heavily to the floor.

Then footsteps and then…

Someone was yelling his name.

Dean. Sam.

There were here.

Cas tried to make a sound, anything, but his body was out of his control then. He was dying, he had seconds, and there were still several inches of stone between him and rescue.

But he didn’t need to do anything to let the brothers know he was there.

Someone was thumping on the lid of his coffin, as if they thought they could pound through it (Dean, he guessed) and he could hear muffled shouts.

And then, just when he tried to take a final breath and _couldn’t_...

Light peeked through at him, and air, as the stone lid was pushed back, and Sam and Dean were staring down at him.

++

Sam drove.

He stuck to the back roads, an old habit, because even though Stevie had killed himself, didn’t mean questions weren’t being asked, and maybe those questions would lead to people working out just what their sheriff had been doing with his time lately, and somebody would think about the two FBI agents looking for their colleague. 

Dean was in the back seat with Cas.

It wasn’t hard to see they’d literally arrived just in time; even when they’d cracked the coffin, it was like Cas’s body had just given up on him, and Dean had reached in and slapped him hard and it was then he’d taken a breath and coughed, and Dean had grabbed him.

They’d hauled him up, lifting him clear of the coffin, and Dean had cursed at the state of him; rope bound and bleeding, and then Sam had seen the box, and he knew those sigils.

Dean had kept Cas upright while Sam shoved the box in a warded box in the trunk and come back to find Cas standing taller, and watched him shrug off the ropes binding him, and pull out the piece of plastic that was embedded in his palm.

They didn’t ask, and Dean pulled the angel into a hug, and then Sam did the same.

So now they were heading home, but none of them were stupid enough to think it was over, which was why Dean was back there with Cas now.

He was sitting so close to the angel he was practically on top of him, but Sam knew Cas wouldn’t refuse the comfort.

Angel or not, almost suffocating in a stone coffin had to put a dent in you, and the days when they’d suck it up and push through and keep going, just shoving down anything that might get in the way of that…

That wasn’t how they did things anymore. And now they had their angel back and they were heading home.

Sam glanced in the rear view mirror, caught Cas’s gaze, and smiled at him.

Cas smiled back.

Yeah. Home.


End file.
